Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on October 22, 2013 by Allahpundit

Following the troubled rollout of the website behind Obamacare, very few Americans said the launch is going well, according to a new poll out Tuesday.

Only 12 percent said the enrollment process on Healthcare.gov is going well, the CBS survey shows. Almost half of Americans say it isn’t and 38 percent say they can’t evaluate.

***

Today, we are announcing key steps the Department is taking as part of a tech surge to continue to improve the consumer experience on HealthCare.gov…

We’ve also brought in additional experts and specialists drawn from within government, our contractors, and industry, including veterans of top Silicon Valley companies. These reinforcements include a handful of Presidential Innovation Fellows. This new infusion of talent will bring a powerful array of subject matter expertise and skills, including extensive experience scaling major IT systems. This effort is being marshaled as part of a cross-functional team that is working aggressively to diagnose parts of HealthCare.gov that are experiencing problems, learn from successful states, prioritize issues, and fix them…

We will continue to keep you updated on our progress on improving HealthCare.gov.

***

President Barack Obama didn’t know about the problems with the Affordable Care Act’s website — despite complaints from insurance companies and the site’s crashing during a test run — until days into its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation’s health chief told CNN on Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted Tuesday that there is significant concern in her department and the White House over the technical debacle surrounding the Obamacare website’s rollout. The site was supposed to make it simple for people to search and sign-up for new health care policies starting on October 1, but instead it’s been clunky and, at times, inoperable.

***

Mike Hash, who directs the Office of Health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, will brief House Democrats Wednesday about implementation of the Affordable Care Act…

“Far too much information about Obamacare’s rollout is being concealed from the public,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said. “All members – as well as the American people – deserve answers for this debacle. That’s why we have asked the administration to provide the same briefing to House Republicans. This snub is all the more offensive after Secretary Sebelius declined to testify at a House hearing this week. It’s time for the Obama administration to honor its promises of transparency and face some accountability.”

***

The that experts say the problems need to be fixed by Thanksgiving to keep the program on track. But there are already murmurings the repair project could go past December 15, the New York Times. The same story mentioned that potentially 5 million lines of computer code could need rewriting. If that’s true, it sounds like it could be the code-writing equivalent of the D-Day invasion — massive, complex and arduous.

Which is not exactly what nervous Democrats want to hear. But they’re sure to ask about it at an Obama administration for House Democrats on Obamacare’s travails scheduled for Wednesday morning. (House Republicans are requesting a similar briefing as well.)

For the congressional Democrats whose votes made the Affordable Care Act a reality and who will have to defend their support for the law in the 2014 mid-term elections, the problems with the federal website are a political nightmare.

Secondly, ObamaCare did not need to be founded on misdirection and hidden taxes on the young. It actually would have been a better program and cheaper for the country if it hadn’t been.

Finally liberals hate to be told their hardball policy aim is to make more Americans dependent on government. But in a year or two thousands or millions of older, sicker ObamaCare customers may find their premiums soaring when the young and healthy didn’t show up to subsidize their care. Then what?

***

Time to panic? No. But it’s time to prepare to panic. It sounds like the earliest anyone is projecting fixes is sometime in the middle of November. That’s the time when it absolutely has to work — and if it doesn’t, we should panic. Maybe not “Get in the shelter, Homer!” panic, but I’d definitely think about rebalancing the 401(k) and maybe voting in some politicians who will treat this with the gravity it deserves, rather than giving Rose Garden speeches saying that everything’s basically A-OK if you don’t look at the parts that don’t work! Because make no mistake: If this piece doesn’t work, then most of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act doesn’t work…

Judging from President Obama’s speech, the administration has decided to triple down on the “burn the boats” strategy pioneered by Hernan Cortes in his conquest of Mexico: Make a total commitment in the hopes that this will somehow enable you to overcome impossible odds. There was no sign of a Plan B (other than call centers), no hint that they might consider a full or partial delay if they couldn’t get the systems working on time. Presumably they think (correctly) that the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to implement a delay, because so many people will have lost their existing insurance and/or bought new policies through the exchanges. But as I pointed out last week, while the “burn the boats” strategy sometimes ends with an improbable victory, the problem is that the other way it ends is in . . . well, a death spiral.

I get that progressive techies didn’t set things up that way, and left to their own devices, can produce pretty good results (see the 2012 Obama campaign). But the governing philosophy they support is at odds with the startup mentality they also embrace. For better or worse, the impulse for a bigger government that makes more health care decisions goes hand in hand with bad procurement laws administered by a unionized federal workforce bullish on routine and bearish on innovation.

This is how we get a bureaucracy that, when it comes to technology, moves slow and still breaks things.

***

Want to know the names of the individuals and companies leading the “tech surge” called in to fix Obamacare’s main website? If you ask “the most transparent administration in history,” you’re basically out of luck…

“If these individuals work for companies that have business before the White House, business before the Congress, do you think, in the interests of transparency, it would be a good idea to list the people and their companies?” asked Ed Henry of Fox News.

“At this point, Ed, I just don’t have more information than I gave you. I would refer you to HHS,” Carney replied, referring to the Department of Health and Human Services…

The problem? An HHS press officer that Yahoo News reached by email wouldn’t comment on the record, while a question submitted via a complex form on the agency’s website never even got a reply.

Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made the request in a letter to Google, Microsoft, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Oracle and Expedia, committee spokeswoman Caitlin Carroll said…

“Despite the President’s assertion that ‘we’re well into a “tech surge”‘ neither the White House nor HHS is providing additional details about which private sector companies have been engaged or whether they are being engaged through the appropriate procurement processes,” Issa said in the letter.

Blowback

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axe: i made another whiskey whilst thinkin’ of your quandry. When i was young i thought there were rules about fighting. it wasn’t ’til i figured out that the queen doesn’t give a shit about me and i started fighting street style. haven’t had a problem since. in politics the only rule is win!

They could bring in Zombie Steve Jobs and it wouldn’t help at this point. No “tech surge” can really fix the problems within the necessary time frame, or anywhere close to it, for reasons that have nothing to do with programming, websites, or the flaws in the law itself.

40 or so years ago there was a book on management practices that explained why it can’t work, I forget the author. What happens is that when a project is overdue, bringing in outside help, no matter how well qualified and experienced, can only delay it more. This is because all the new “White Knights” have to be brought up to speed on everything: what was done, why it doesn’t work, what was tried to fix it, where we are now, etc. Even geniuses need time to absorb the work of two or more years.

Any team project develops a dynamic web of lines of authority and communications, too, over time, to function efficiently. Adding arbitrary new experts to the team with new and evolving authorities requires this system be completely rebuilt with respect to the new team, and necessarily requires a more complex web of interaction than existed before. All of this just makes everything take longer.

`

One of the key problems was Obama’s insistence that people not be able to get a price before setting up an account and providing detailed personal information, including financial details. This was so no one saw the raw prices if they might qualify for a subsidy; they would only see the lower net price. It was to avoid scaring people off. But it complicated the process intolerably, causing crashes and delays like a DOS attack.

Programmers will tell you correcting such a “glitch” isn’t as easy as finding the offending code and amending or deleting it. Everything that interacts with the code or the information it generates/evaluates/stores could be affected, too, sometimes in ways not easy to anticipate.

did any of you all see…or did you allready cover
the UNODA UN paper a week or two ago..
the 7 steps the civil weapons collection study group
would use to collect firearms in america??
also the email i got from my friend had the
46 senators that voted to let the UN overturn our 2nd amend..
anyone else see that post??

i got a scan from my friend..
with the UN seal on the letterhead..
says..
“within the discussion framework, we have identified several problem areas that must be addressed”
1. classification of military grade weapons made illegal for posession.
2.creation of programs to provide reasonable compensation for voluntary surrender of said arms.
3. codification of laws to begin the restricting and strict licensing of concealable firearms.
4.codification of laws to begin the restricting and strict licensing of hunting grade firearms.
5.codification of laws to restrict the sale and possession of ammunition and componets to manufacture ammunition.
6.finally, codification of laws to completely makers any and all firearms illegal to own, possess or use outside of military and law enforcement usage.
7.creation of a United Nations Police Taskforce with the specific lission of assisting member nations with the collection of weponry from civilian hands.
end quote

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Medical plans in the individual market;

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Dental plans in the small group (SHOP) market.

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Couple (column L) = two adults age 40, no children

Child (column M) = one child any age

Note that child-only plans will only show premiums for the Premium Child column and plans that prohibit child-only coverage will not show premiums for the Premium Child column.

We came four votes away from the U.S. Senate giving our Constitutional rights over to the United Nations.
In a 53-46 vote, the Senate narrowly passed a measure that will stop the United States from entering into the
United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.

The Statement of Purpose from the Bill reads: “To uphold Second Amendment rights and prevent the
United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.”

The U.N. Small Arms Treaty, which has been championed by the Obama Administration, would have
effectively placed a global ban on the import and export of small firearms. The ban would have affected
all private gun owners in the U.S. and had language that would have implemented an international gun
registry on all private guns and ammo.

Astonishingly, 46 out of our 100 United States Senators were willing to give away our Constitutional rights
to a foreign power and to allow the creation of an UN police force to come into this country to assist in the
collection of weapons from US, you and me!

you did notice that mccain mcdonnell and grahamnstey
were not on the list..
i hear ppl yelling throw this one out or that one out
and the RINO RINO RINO claim..
i hope most could agree that
those 46 names…are the enemy…clearly..

tell me about it…im in michigan…2 on the list..
we would kill for a rino here…
levin has pushed union socalism here for over 30 years…
and stabanow more than a dozen…
after that…mcCain looks like a hero still..
slow…confused…stuck in the ole boys club…sure
but he aint voting at the freakin UN to kill
the Second Amendment…

i think i know their strategy now…they know the low information voter has short term memory, so they need to keep saying that the tea party and the gop are bad for the country ad nauseum so that they will remember at the polls in nov 2014?

40% approval for lee is terrible for him
37% approval for obama is an outlier and doesn’t mean anything
-morning joe crew

cmsinaz on October 23, 2013 at 6:09 AM

Let’s be clear here cmsinaz. The Morning Joe Crew isn’t making that claim. It comes from Mika’s daily briefing from the West Wing.

Here’s a good question you’ll never see on MJ. The claim has been made that Obama was just as surprised as the rest of us that the HealthCare.gov is nothing more than an Error 404 generator. Actually some of us were not all that surprised but shouldn’t somebody be fired for not keeping “the boss” informed?

it just irks me with the ad nauseum attacks against rummy and that he should resign due to abu graib but none of that now with sebelius….

cmsinaz on October 23, 2013 at 6:28 AM

Sebelius can’t be fired. That would be an admission that something is wrong with their “glitchy” website and enrollment in general. Even last night the wicked witch was out there blaming it mostly on all of trying to log in and start getting covered by this wonderful program. Demand merely pointed out previously undetected problems that the surge is now correcting.

All I can say is that by the end Hitler was moving non-existant armies around Berlin because nobody was willing to tell him the truth. What we see here is much the same thing. Nobody wants to admit that the only real solution here is to scrap something that they spent over half a billion on.

further solidifies the fact that the obama whitehouse has been anti women since its inception.

the gop silent and prostrate.

renalin on October 23, 2013 at 6:34 AM

That’s not entirely true.

Valerie Jarrett was referred to as a “vacuous cipher” also but
John Noonan, a national security staffer on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, was referred to as an “overweight paid Romney shill.”

I think the most telling thing here is that being critical of the administration is what gets you fired not, say, being responsible for the deaths of four Americans who were unprotected because added security didn’t fit the narrative. Nor does lying your ass off about a YouTube video while doing the full Ginsberg. Nor does getting caught harassing conservative groups trying to get tax exempt status (that actually gets you promoted). Nor, for that matter, does operating a gun running operation that actually armed and laundered money for the Mexican drug cartels.

The GOP hasn’t exactly been silent about all of this but they haven’t been effective either.

appears so, throw more good money after bad and the dems are already asking for it…

cripe…the squishy gop will give it to them as well…

cmsinaz on October 23, 2013 at 6:38 AM

House Dems are getting a closed door brief today on how Obamacare enrollment is going. House Republicans don’t have the same opportunity. They should be screaming bloody murder that the administration is denying them the information they need for oversight.

There are a number of books on the topic of software engineering projects and their problems.

One of the best known is The Mythical Man-Month and is the classic of the field of program management and well beyond software and hardware for its ability to describe problems in program management as a whole. Being a compilation of essays it offers a number of perspectives to get the thematic point home of how program management views actual program logistics as being back-assward. And it still is in many realms far outside the tech industry.

The current programmatic problems of not setting proper software and hardware goals, not doing triage of expectations, and of getting into a continuous loop of program management decline on a project that cannot work is Ed Yourdon’s Death March, which I read in its 1st edition and was an excellent overview of problems of more recent program management problems.

There are a number of excellent books out there on the problems, but if you want the Old School IBM problems (which now fester in federal IT procurement) or more modern problems of program management (which happens in the oversight of federal IT projects just as much as in the private sector) then those two get you started. They deal with the sociology of program management and the real problems of human nature when in projects and programs… and allows individuals to instantly spot problem programs at the start so that they can bail out ASAP, unless they have a good reason to stay in.

There are people who will join Death Marches, but their reasons don’t tend to be oriented towards the supposed goal of the program. Young individuals just starting out who want large-scale program experience will join one. So, too, will old hands wanting to brush up on code or try different ways of doing code knowing that it will be scrapped and probably never see the light of day. There are also individuals who take the pragmatic ‘its just a paycheck’ approach and who turn out lackluster code knowing it won’t see the light of day. The main problem of a poorly run program is that those who want to perform and shine will quickly identify a problematic program and scamper in weeks or months after its start… and usually only giving a cursory backgrounding to those coming in to replace them. After that poorly written code, poorly documented code, experimental code left in once its writer leaves are all symptomatic of a poorly run program from the program manager’s side of things. As the deadline for a program nears the turn-over in personnel increases, and the need to spend work hours also becomes topmost, and thus the Mythical Man-Month problem rears its ugly head once more in the modern age. Throwing more people at a project to expend man-hours and man-months is insane once you are within weeks of delivery, and yet that is what you often see on failing projects and programs.

Book end the modern program management era with those two and you can then fill in some of the major pieces with specialized work. These give you an idea of what the problems are and after that you can either look at specifics or look at books geared towards large-scale change of corporate culture in program management to get better results by properly scaling programs at the start and putting down triage at the start so that something functional gets delivered. Needless to say all the government ‘re-invention’ groups and ‘process improvement’ groups rarely utilize those and when people come in who have read such works then put forward systemic changes, it falls on deaf ears. BTDTGTTS.

OT but this truly is a quote of the day. Bill Young’s widow reportedly sent the following message to Charlie Crist:

“This e-mail is to officially advise you that your presence at my husband’s memorial services will be unacceptable. I have watched over the years, as Bill had, your transparent attempts to manipulate the political arena. I don’t want my husband’s memorial service to be another opportunity for that and I will not tolerate anyone turning this into a platform for political gain. Please honor my family’s request.”

All ObamaCare seems to be doing is causing people to lose their insurance.
Double down Barry. This is working out great.

Oh.. and if you do hear somewhere out there about somebody getting coverage through ObamaCare.. and their payment is low.. be sure to check on that deductible. It’s probably like $10,000.

JellyToast on October 23, 2013 at 6:57 AM

Drudge lies. Sebelius said that nobody is losing their insurance! In her interview with Sanjay Gupta she said:

People have available coverage and no one, I think it’s important to say, Sanjay, is losing coverage now. The earliest the plans start is January 1st. If you sign up by the 15th of December, you will have coverage on day one. So, people are frustrated with a website, but the product is there. The prices are good. It will not sellout and the prices won’t change.

See? I don’t know what all the fuss is about? It’s a good product and won’t sell out! /

Oh, and if I hear of somebody getting Obamacare coverage and their rates are low, I don’t care about their deductible. I will know that they are an OFA shill because nobody but nobody is actually getting a good deal out of this.

“All members – as well as the American people – deserve answers for this debacle.” – Brendan Buck, John Boehner spokesman

Personally, I’m more interested in the previous and deadly fusterclucks like F&F, Benghazi, etc. It appears as though Ø’Bumbler is simply piling on the scandals without a thought as to how to explain/justify them in such a manner as to pacify his critics. The Øne simply wants everyone to – what a used car salesman would say: “Trust Me”.
Sure, Barry, Sure.Paraphrasing Nikita Kruschev: “We Will Barry You!”http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/poster-we-will-barry-you-nikita-khrushchev-1956-t9626.html
~(Ä)~

It appears as though Ø’Bumbler is simply piling on the scandals without a thought as to how to explain/justify them in such a manner as to pacify his critics. The Øne simply wants everyone to – what a used car salesman would say: “Trust Me”.

Karl Magnus on October 23, 2013 at 7:23 AM

The lazy stupid coward knows he’s bulletproof. No way are the Dems going to allow anything happen to the first affirmative action President. He could go on the floor of the House and impale puppies and he’d have more than enough defenders.

Lee and Cruz are the hottest politicians right now. You would think MSNBC and Morning Joe would want to have them on their show. They would be a big “get”. Instead they spend the first 15 minutes of their show talking about polls.

Guess that’s 300,000 more that will have to pay additional taxes to the Inner Party or have IRS thugs pay them a little visit. Double plus good!

Dr. ZhivBlago on October 22, 2013 at 11:00 PM

We lost a client because they decided to dump their employees (a few thousand) out to the exchanges with a stipend to cover part of the expense. Apparently, they realized it just wasn’t worth the time and effort any more. I’m not sure what will happen if their employees aren’t able to purchase coverage because the exchanges are down. We’re past time to formulate a benefits plan. Their network, TPA and us were already notified of termination.